Hello, new here.

I recently purchaced a new machine. HP Pavilion a1720n Desktop PC.

I do extensive work in audio (composing, tracking, mixing, mastering pre/post), and cannot be bothered by the "newness" and lack of audio drivers for Vista, so installed XP Pro Sp2 to an extra IDE drive I had. (Vista is of course on the SATA).

The specs to my motherboard can be found here;

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/g...name=c00379422


I do not need to install XP to the SATA drive. I simply need XP to see the SATA drive as a secondary data drive (to store my audio files - read/write methods in audio work need a second drive for audio).

I have looked all over, back and forth for drivers to install on my XP drive to allow it to see the SATA drive, to no avail. And all google searches, just tell ways to install XP to an SATA drive..

I hope I didn't make that too long. Thanks a ton for the help. I really need it in this case.

Well, are you sure XP is not seeing the SATA drive? Did you check Device Manager and the Disk Management utilities? Maybe it just can't understand the Vista partitioning scheme?

Thanks. I thought it didnt show as a prob device, but I guess it does. As far as Vista's file system, it shows as just plain NTFS.


The Disc manager doesn't see the drive at all. However the Device Manager does.


The problem devices that I saw you can see here,

http://img159.imageshack.us/img159/4039/devicech5.png

This is a discription of the problem devices (the ones that matter)




RAID Controler - PCI bus 0, device 31, function 2

SM Bus Controler-PCI bus 0, device 31, function 3

PCI Simple Communication Controler - PCI Slot 3 (PCI bus 1, device 5, function 0)

PCI Device - PCI bus 0, device 27, function 0



I looked everywhere, up, down, left, right, I cannot find any drivers for this. Or am I just missing something ?


If this matters at all, when I select which drive to boot into, it shows the SATA drive, as "RAID 0".


edit, BTW, one of those, or two of those problem devices are going to be the soundcard(s). The Vista RealTek soundcard dont work in XP - and I had my pro level (audio) card unplugged.

Wow! Look at all those exclamation marks! And no, looks like the SATA drive isn't recognised.

You should start by going to the HP website and downloading/installing the latest drivers for all your hardware. SInce it is a fairly standard motherboard, you might find the drivers on the Asus website too.

Either the "PCI Device" or the "RAID controller" will become the controller for the SATA drive.

Thanks a ton, my prob is, I cant find the mobo listed at all at ASUS, and HP has zero drivers for XP, only Vista!

Have you tried Windows Update while in Windows XP Internet Explorer? It's just a stab in the dark but perhaps it might provide some missing drivers.

This HP machine seems to use the same motherboard: http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/s...502610&lang=en

i had the same problem. I installed NIC driver from www.asus.com and downloaded the P5LD2-VM driver. The only ones I'm missing now are the audio drivers and the SM bus controller which I think is the Smart media. hope that helps you out a bit.

Thanks, I hope so, will try tonight.